February 2, 2002

[General] Well. As it turns out...

Well.

As it turns out, neither my arm nor the software rollout would figure much in the weekend. I woke up Friday morning with Bronchitis.

I had gone to dinner Thursday evening with my boss and his staff, which includes my group and one other. We had a lovely time dining on Portugese food and drinking some yummy wine. I got home from dinner about 9:00 and proceeded to watch a little TV. At some point in the evening, I started to cough. It was just a little cough, but it felt kind of funny in my chest. And my throat felt a little scratchy.

OH, NO, thought I. I can't get sick. I have to work this weekend. I have to work 12-hour night shifts this weekend. There is no room for sick in 12-hour night shifts. So, I took some vitamin C and went to bed. I wasn't working Friday morning, so I thought that I would sleep in, kill what was ailing me, then go get my arm X-Rayed in the afternoon.

That plan was shot all to hell when I woke up at 7 AM with a fever and a pretty unmanegeable cough.

OK. I'm going to the doctor anyway to get my referral to get my arm X-rayed. Lynn (one of the receptionistas) had told me that if I wanted the doctor to actually look at my arm, she'd fit me in somewhere. So I called and said, you know, fit me in. :)

Unfortunately, they were very busy, so "fitting me in" meant me waiting in the lobby for 2 hours. I was pretty miserable. I mean, all I really wanted to do was sleep. In fact, when they finally led me to a room, that's exactly what I did. While waiting for the doctor, I slouched over, clutching my keys and my Janet Evanovich novel, and fell asleep.

Ten minutes or so later, the doctor comes in and confirms that I have bronchitis. She also wants me to go get a chest X-ray, to rule out pneumonia. Ok, that shouldn't be a problem. I was going to get my arm X-rayed anyway. She also tells me that I can't work this weekend. Panic sets in. I have to work this weekend. This is the culmination of 18 months of work. We're finally birthing the baby. I have to be there. I'll be in so much trouble if I'm not there.

She tells me that that's nice, but I'm not going to work. I'm contagious, number 1 and , number 2, could get very sick if I don't rest this weekend. If I rest this weekend, I can go back to work Monday.

So, armed with prescriptions, and a note for my boss saying that I have the plague and that I am not allowed with humans, I go off to the radiology center.

The wait there wasn't too bad, but mind that, at this point, I have been out of bed for 5 hours and as sick as I was, it felt like eternity. Finally, they call me back and hand me some sort of strait jacket in a bag. I mean, the thing had three arm holes. Um....nurse? I don't seem to have three arms. Could I get the regular two-armed...thing, please? After multiple tries, I did manage to spin myself into the three-armed thing, although I looked at other patients on my way to the actual room and I still think that I did it wrong.

The chest X-ray was a breeze but when it was time to do the elbow, the radiology tech starts jerking my arm around and causing me great pain. I kept telling her which way my arm doesn't bend and she kept bending it that way. As upset as I was about everything else, I am surprised that I didn't deck her.

So, I head back to my car to take stock of what I have left to accomplish. I need to get the prescriptions filled. I need to get some sick food: soup, juice, get-better bears. I need to at least pick up my laptop from the office. My laptop is locked, though, so I will either need to go in the office (probably bad, since I am contagious) or just drop the key with my husband and have him pack it for me and bring it home. (John works for the same company I do--probably not for much longer but that's its own entry). This is starting to feel complicated.

OK. There's a superfresh about a mile from the office and they have a pharmacy. I will go there, drop off my prescription, get my sick food, pick up my drugs and stop at the office on the way home. Then, merciful God, I will sleep. Seemed like a plan.

I've now been awake for 6 hours.

So I go to the pharmacy and hand them my prescriptions and my insurance card. I say loudly and with much clarity: I have never been here before. The pharmacy woman looks at me sort of blankly, but she takes the prescriptions and the insurance card and says, "20 minutes." Ok. I can stay awake for 20 minutes. I begin my trek through the store which is arduous because I can't remember from one minute to the next what I need to buy. I feel like my crazy grandfather. So, finally, armed with soup and peanut butter and juice and magazines, I check out, take my groceries to the car, and walk back to the pharmacy counter.

Where I suffer a psychotic break.

I walk up and a different person says, "yes?" and I say my last name, in the manner that people say their last names at pharmacies, in that manner that conveys the idea that one is here to pick up a prescription under the name just stated.

"Ah, yes," pharmacy goon says. "You've never been here before." I feel my sanity start to slip. Of course, I've never been here before. I told them that. "We need to get your information," he tells me. I am stunned. Please tell me that you have my prescriptions ready to go.

"Please tell me that you have already filled the prescriptions."

"Well, no. We need to get your information."

Name, address, date of birth. I start to cry. I give him what he asks. He tells me it will be 15 minutes. I cry harder. 14 minutes?, he suggests with a smirk. I cry even harder. I am not sure how I was able to at that point, but I did. Fine. 10 minutes.

I slump to the floor in the supermarket, crying. My cell phone rings. It's John. I am crying so hard that he can't understand anything except that I am hysterical. I am sick, I tell him, and the ass-monkeys at the pharmacy messed up my prescription, and I had to wait 20 minutes and now it will be 10 more and the people at the radiology center hurt my arm and I really need to sleep now and there's no way for me to do that and I can't work this weekend and everyone will be disappointed in me and Scott (our VP) will never forgive me and...

And then pharmacy dude interrupts to tell me that they don't carry one of the prescriptions.

I am going to have to go somewhere else. I looked him square in the eye and, through a haze of tears, I borrowed a phrase from my friend Leigh:

"You know, you're really busting my buzz here."

To make an impossibly long story a little less long, I dropped off my laptop key, ran into Scott in the parking lot, tried to reassure him that I wasn't a slacker, started crying again (I am sure that I looked absolutely frightening at this point), received absolution, stopped crying, went to Target, got the rest of my medicine and went home.

I finally got to go to sleep at 3:00. I had been up for 8 hours. It felt like 18.

Posted by Lori at February 2, 2002 12:46 PM